GPA

GPA Policy and How to Calculate GPA

The following policies are also located in the College Catalog and are summarized on the TRANSCRIPT GUIDE which accompanies every official transcript sent by the Office of the Registrar.

Grades

A means excellent work; B, good work; C, satisfactory work; D, passing but below the average required for graduation; and NC (no credit), uncompleted or unsatisfactory work. Letter grades may be qualified by pluses and minuses.

Shadow Grades

Unofficial letter equivalencies for Credit/No Credit courses, also called "shadow grades," are not a part of the official grade record (transcript), and have no impact on Swarthmore GPA, however shadow grades are used internally for advising and certain other reasons. Students can see their shadow grades on mySwarthmore, under the "Student Records" menu.

First-year students after the first semester may want to share their shadow grades.

Grade Point Average (GPA)

Swarthmore College does not rank students in class, nor does it provide GPA outside the College. If you would like to calculate a GPA the way the College does for its graduation requirement (step by step instructions below), please use the following Swarthmore grade point equivalents:

The following grades are not included in the calculation of the grade average degree requirement: CR (credit), NC (no credit), NR (grade not reported by the instructor), INC (incomplete), IP (in progress), R (audit), W (Withdrawal), and * (ungraded credits earned for honors work prior to 1997). For 1997 and 1998 only: HHH=4.0, HH=3.83, H=3.5 (Senior Honors Study grades only).

Grades followed by an asterisk indicate that the letter grade was earned elsewhere. Numeric grades are used for inter-institutional courses done at Bryn Mawr or Haverford, whose letter point equivalencies are on a 4.0 scale. Grades for work done elsewhere are recorded on the Swarthmore transcript but are not included in the calculation of the grade average degree requirement.

Grades for excluded courses are recorded on the Swarthmore transcript but are not included in the calculation of the grade average degree requirement. Swarthmore normally excludes two kinds of courses: the earlier instance of a repeated course (except for the few courses which may be repeated for credit), and the first semester of the first year of language instruction if the second semester is not completed. Courses excluded from degree credit are indicated with an "E" in the "R" column on the transcript, or, on transcripts without an R column, their grades appear in parentheses, or circled.

Grade Point Average (GPA) in Law and Medical School application

Students applying to law school or medical school apply through a centralized process that calculates your GPA according to their rules, not ours. Both typically count all letter grades, regardless of whether they have been excluded or not. And both count NC as a fail, with zero grade points for the credit.

How to calculate GPA

GPA is always the result of a division of two sums. It is the sum of "grade points" divided by the sum of "gpa credits".

First calculate the grade points for each and every course. This can be tricky, see below. Once you have the points per course, add them all up for the sum of the grade points. Now add up the gpa credits for the sum of the credits. Divide the sum of the points by the sum of the credits.

Grade points per course are the product of the grade point equivalent from the list above, times the credits earned in the course. GPA credits are the credits earned in courses for which grade points have been earned.

For example, an A in a 1.0 credit course is worth 1 x 4.0 = 4.0 points. The GPA for that one course would be 4 points divided by 1.0 credits equals 4.0, just what you'd expect. The GPA for two, 1-credit courses in which an A and a B were earned is calculated as follows: (4.0 x 1 credit) + (3.0 x 1 credit) = 7 grade points, divided by 1 + 1 = 2 credits, is 7 / 2 = 3.5.

The only "tricky part" comes when the courses are not 1.0 credit, but a half a credit or 2 credits. In these cases, you need to pay special attention to all the calculations involved. Let's say you have an A in a 2 credit course, and an A in a 1/2 credit course. For the 2 credit course, there are 2 x 4.0 equals 8 grade points. For the 0.5 credit course, it's 0.5 times 4.0 equals 2 grade points. Add 8 + 2, that equals 10. Ten divided by 2.5 credits gives a GPA of 4.0, just as you'd expect.

Note to graduates with split-graded 2-credit seminars: In 1998 we started splitting up those 2 credit "split-graded" seminars so the grades would be explicitly for 1 credit each. Thus I recommend you consider the two grades as two, 1-credit grades.

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